Grid Down: A Strike against America – An EMP Survival Story- Book One (7 page)

“Sure did,” he answered, digging under the seat. He emerged with a thick black crowbar in hand and his box of ChemLights. “Now I’m ready.” He turned to Carlos and Brad. “Five to ten minutes, tops.”

“Good luck,” Carlos said.

They walked off toward the entrance and stopped at the automatic glass door. It was shut and wouldn’t budge. Rob slid the crowbar into the slit in the doors and jerked it to the side, trying to pry them open.

Peter stepped forward and pushed one door to the side with all his might. It looked as if there was just enough space to squeeze through.

Rob’s temples throbbed as sweat formed on his forehead. “Mila, go ahead and squeeze in here.”

Peter’s shaking arms held the gap, and she slipped in. “Now you, Peter …” Rob said while pushing against the crowbar. Peter let go and quickly squeezed in. The door was about to close again. Rob pushed inside just as the doors retracted and slammed shut.

They walked into a darkened lobby, where the air was stale and the chairs, reception desks, and halls vacant—like everything they’d seen so far.

Mila seemed transfixed by the surreal quality of it all. She’d never seen the place so empty or so free of the hyperactivity usually present in the emergency room. The halls were littered with papers along with empty gurneys, knocked-over trashcans, and blue hospital scrubs lying on the tile floor.

“Hello?” she called out.

Rob put his hand on her shoulder. “Looks like your coworkers left this place some time ago. Anyone still here is not someone we want to come across.”

“This isn’t right,” she said, frazzled. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Rob took both her hands in his and looked her in the eyes. “Of course it doesn’t. But we need to push on.”  

Peter paced the waiting area impatiently. He didn’t look any more comfortable than when they’d first asked him to go.

Mila snapped out of her daze and moved down the first cluttered hallway to their right. “This way,” she said, as they followed.

“Watch out back,” Rob said to Peter, “and stay alert for sounds or movements.”

An empty hospital was creepy enough in the daytime, but with the sun rapidly fading, the already-dim hall was growing creepier by the minute. They passed vacant doctors’ offices, and testing rooms with expensive equipment now dormant.

“Pharmacy is on the second floor,” Mila said. With her light sneakers she moved across the tile like air, as Rob and Peter, both wearing hiking boots, clomped behind. They passed some restrooms, and Peter couldn’t resist trying the water fountain. He stopped and pushed the bar. Not a drop came out.

“Damn …” he said.

Mila pushed the door leading to the stairs as Rob and Peter followed.

“Where do you think everyone went?” Peter asked. His voice echoed up the stairwell.

“Home,” Rob said. “I imagine they did everything they could. Then they realized that assistance was never going to come.”

Mila couldn’t help but feel a knot in her stomach. As if sensing her shame, Rob touched her shoulder. “There’s nothing you could have done, either. Remember, family first. Always.”

“I know,” she said. “But this is where I work. These people are my family too, and it’s killing me to see the place like this.”

They reached the second floor as Rob urged her to step aside. He carefully pushed the door open and peeked out—more empty halls. “Coast looks clear. Have your weapons at the ready.”

Nervous, Peter fumbled with his pistol and almost dropped it.

Mila continued in a hushed voice. “What about your shop? Our house?”

“Focus,” Rob said. “Please. We’ll check everything soon enough.”

She led the way, left and down the hall, where a strange odor hit them.

“This is the ICU,” she said. “Pharmacy is at the end.”

Rob glanced at a sign that listed the different departments. An arrow next to Pharmacy pointed in their current direction. That she knew her way around was to be expected after five years of working there. The odor grew more potent the closer they got to the double doors at the end of the lengthy, darkened hall. Something wasn’t right. The stench became more overpowering and gag-inducing as they passed each vacant patient room.

Peter covered his mouth and nose with his shirt. “What is that smell?”

Mila cupped her mouth and stopped dead in her tracks. To her right was an open patient room, and it was clear enough where the noxious odor was coming from. A decomposed body sat upright in bed. Long, stringy gray hair ran from the top of its leathery head, hanging over sunken black holes.

Mila gasped as Rob jolted back. Peter looked in and fell to his knees, dry-heaving. “Oh God!” he kept saying between retches. “Close the door already!”

Rob leaned in to close the door, but Mila stopped him. She walked slowly into the room, holding her mouth. The withered corpse on the bed was still wearing a hospital robe. Mila glanced at a clipboard resting on a wheeled table. Her name was Florence Gardner, and she was seventy-five years old.

Mila walked closer to the bed as dust particles drifted down in the remaining rays of light seeping in through the window. Florence had decomposed beyond recognition, but she was at rest. Mila pulled a pair of latex gloves from a wall dispenser and put them on. She gently pulled the covers over the woman, up to the top of her head.

“Mila, come on!” Rob said in a hushed but forceful tone.  

She patted the top of the sheets over Florence’s head. After a moment of silence she turned, removed the gloves and left the room, closing the door behind her.

They continued down the hall, holding their mouths to block the odors. Perhaps there were others, just like Florence, who never had a chance of being moved out of the hospital in time. Rob checked each room on the right as Mila checked the left. He was on alert for trouble, while she checked the beds for patients. Peter kept his focus behind them, looking for anyone who might be following.

They came to a pair of double doors, marked “Pharmacy,” and stopped. Rob placed his hand on the door and hesitated. He peeked through the glass slits on both doors only to see a darkened lobby and a barren counter sitting in the corner of the room.  He turned to the others.

“The coast looks clear, but we need to be quick. Mila, get what you need. Peter and I will keep watch.”

Mila nodded. “I’m ready.”

“It would be a miracle if anything was left,” Peter said. “Looters probably raided the place weeks ago.”

“I don’t doubt it, but let’s hold out for the best,” Rob said.

He pushed open the doors, and the scene before them unfolded as something far worse than simple looting. It looked like the aftermath of a violent assault. Walls, riddled with bullets. Chairs blasted into pieces. Empty shelves covered the ground. Dried blood smeared on the floor and walls, but not a body in sight. 

“I feel like we’re walking through a crime scene,” Peter said nervously as they advanced to the pharmacy counter.

“Just stay alert,” Rob said. “Whatever happened here is over.”

Mila led the way and couldn’t help being distracted by the remnants of violence in their path. A firefight in a hospital? It was incomprehensible. She had known that venturing back to her hospital would be difficult, but could never have imagined what she was seeing. She pushed on and hurried to the counter. The door had already been blasted off its hinges. It lay on the ground filled with bullet holes, spread out in clusters.

“Wait,” Rob said. “Let me clear the room first.”

Mila held up her pistol. “I can do it.” There were rows of shelves aligned from the front of the room to the back. At first glance, she could see that most of them had been pillaged and cleared and were now caked with dust. It was too dark to see what remained. She stepped over the door and gasped. A pair of legs was sticking out from the bottom of the fourth shelving unit down.

“What is it?” Rob asked, running her way. He pulled a ChemLight from his pocket, snapped it and held it up in the darkened stock room as it glowed yellow.

“A body,” Mila said, pointing. The familiar odor of death wafted toward them. Rob urged Mila back and walked past the shelves with his gun drawn and ChemLight held high. He turned and saw the body of a man lying on his back, motionless.

His skin had turned blue. His shaggy hair spread on the tile floor. His mouth agape and eyes widened. White foam had crusted over his beard. Rob held the ChemLight over the man and saw a syringe lodged in his right arm and small empty bottles of morphine lying close by.

Rob looked up. “He must have passed recently. Drug overdose, it looks like.”

Mila approached cautiously and looked down at the man with sadness. “Follow me,” she said to Rob. They hurried down each aisle as he lit the way. Predictably, the pharmacy had been cleaned out, though she was still surprised by the sheer vastness of it.

“This wasn’t random looting,” Rob said. “This was a calculated heist.”

She stopped in front of a shelf that had a few small boxes on it. “Looks like they missed some stuff.” She pulled the bag from her shoulder and tossed the boxes inside.

“What’d you find?” Rob said and held the ChemLight closer.

“Just what we need,” Mila said. “Antibiotics.” She turned around looking across at the depleted shelves. “If I can just get some ibuprofen and IV bags, I think Reba will be fine.”

“Gauze, cleaning pads, disinfectant, medical kits. Can you get any of that stuff? That’s what we need back at camp.”

“Yes, storage room. Third floor. Hopefully that hasn’t been raided too.”

“The only way to know is to check,” Rob said. “But we’re losing time. Let’s move.”

“What’s taking so long back there?” Peter said nervously as he paced the lobby.

“Keep your voice down,” Rob said.    

They emerged from the pharmacy to find Peter eager and waiting to move on. “I don’t like this place. It reeks of death.”

They followed Mila to the next door, which led to another long hall full of wheelchairs, gurneys, bedsheets, and papers strewn about. They took the next set of stairs to the third floor.

The administrative floor wasn’t in shambles like the others, but was just as devoid of activity. Its carpeted halls gave them quiet travel to an unmarked room bolted shut behind two doors.

“This is the room,” Mila said.

“Stand back,” Rob said, holding up his crowbar. He thrust the end into the door and pried it open.

Once inside, they were greeted by a darkened room twice the size of a janitor’s closet, with steel mobile shelving units standing against the walls. Rob quickly snapped two additional ChemLights and handed them to Mila and Peter. “Time to load up and get out of here.”

There were only a few supplies left, but it felt like a bonanza. The staff had apparently rummaged through the shelves in haste and had left plenty of valuable items behind. They grabbed latex gloves, medical gauze, disinfectant, IV bags, aspirin, ointment packs, bandages, medical tape, slings, tourniquets, and hand sanitizer. Enough for one haul. With their bags filled, they left the room and headed back downstairs.

The satisfied group moved quickly to the first floor and past the lobby to the exit. Mila stopped and took one last look around, hoping for better days on the horizon.

They slipped through the double doors again and made it outside, taking in the fresh air. Carlos and Brad were waiting, leaning against the tailgate of their truck.

“You’re late,” Carlos said, looking at his bare wrist.

Brad spit the taste of gasoline from his mouth. “Did you bring some breath mints?”

“Sorry. Couldn’t find any,” Rob answered. “We good to go on fuel?”

“Twenty gallons in the tank,” Carlos answered. “You’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” Mila said with gracious undertones. “We owe you one.”

“You got that right,” Carlos said.

With bags in hand, Peter and Rob went to both sides of the truck and opened the doors. Carlos asked Mila about what kind of supplies they’d found.

“Lots of things. Just what we needed. We were very lucky.”

Peter placed his bag inside and leaned on the door. “You wouldn’t believe what that place looks like inside.”

Brad and Carlos seemed intrigued and looked at Mila to elaborate. She waved Peter off.

“It was nothing. Some vandalism—broken windows. Holes in the wall. That kind of thing. The place is deserted in there.”

“Don’t forget to mention the dead bodies,” Peter said.

Their eyes widened. “Dead bodies?” Carlos said.

“Let’s go,” Rob said and climbed into the driver’s seat. “We have more places to hit up.”

Mila approached the passenger’s side with Peter as Carlos and Brad followed.

“Hey, bro. How about you let me ride up front for a while?” Carlos said.

Peter turned around slightly. “Sorry, Carlos. I have to ride up here. The wind isn’t good for my… uh, allergies.”

Carlos and Brad looked at each other suspiciously.

“How convenient,” Carlos said.

“Let’s go!” Rob called out from the driver’s seat. “Time’s wasting.”

He stuck his keys in the ignition when a shot suddenly echoed through the air, shattering the passenger-side window. An implosion of shards slashed through Peter’s right hand. He stood frozen in shock and stared at his bloody hand. But everyone else kicked into high gear.

Mila fell to the pavement and rolled under the truck. Rob ducked down and looked into the rearview mirror. Two men with long hunting rifles were running through the parking lot straight toward them.

“Take cover!” he shouted.

Carlos grabbed Peter and yanked him to the back bumper, where Brad had rolled. A trail of blood followed them as Peter clutched his ravaged hand, shaking. Another shot fired, blasting out the front windshield.

Rob dropped down and buried his face in the vinyl seat as bits of glass rained on his head. He pulled his pistol and waited while listening to the sound of the men’s footsteps running across the pavement.